Sunday, October 16, 2016

Gunboat to the Rescue! (A Sudan Battle)

I hosted another battle here in my basement for my cousins who have never played a miniature battle before. I think they are hooked. We had a blast.

Using The Sword and the Flame and my new river rules Gunboat and Dhow which will be released soon, we had a hard close fight. With Commander Lloyd and Lt. Commander Ian leading the British and Egyptian forces I took on the role of the Dervish.

The battle was scheduled for eight (8) turns and using both sets of rules for river and ground combat we had no problem completing the battle in around 3 hours. The Gunboat and Dhow rules are being written to provide a means of maintaining the flow of TSATF and not slow anything down during play. There will be more on that later. To the battle!

The Anglo/Egyptian Force:
B Class Gunboat 77 with two main guns, a squad of Marines lead by Lt. Cmdr. Ian
Shore party of a Royal Marine unit plus a Screw Gun lead by Cmdr. Lloyd.

The Dervish Force:
Three Jihadiya units
Three Handendoah units
Two Kordufan units
Two Krupp 6pdrs
One Rifle unit

The premise of this scenario is that the Egyptians are under siege all over the Sudan. This is a battle where a Colonel Rashid with a unit of regulars fled to the river and setup camp. Here they wait for an evacuation. The British are on the way to their position but are going in slowly. A Dervish trap is suspected. The gunboat has made its way into the area, deployed Marines and a gun and will steam up the river to the Egyptian camp cautiously.

I setup VPs for destroying units, capturing Rashid, etc. It ended up some something like 94 to 127 in favor of the...oh yeah, take a look at the pictorial After Action Report.

It was a fun and great way to spend a Saturday morning, fighting with the family...

I hope you enjoy the blog...

Last Stand Dan

Note: Gunboat is scratch built model from Last Stand Boatyard, the hills you see on the table are from Bill's Gamer Garage.

Furt, B&B are a very good ruleset. It's good if you are doing boat to boat battles where you are provided with some very detailed mechanics. But the issue comes when you try to mix both ground and water operations in the same battle. B&B has the mechanics to do that but you perform all of the water operations first and then the ground second. The system of combat is not the same as TSATF so that added more challenges working two battle systems. I found that it leaves a lot of players in the larger battles with nothing to do and they get a little impatient. So with the rules I am designing it smoothes out the flow and follows the familiar mechanics of TSATF. I am in the process of having them proofread and will be released soon. Along with building more boats that will be made available on TMP Marketplace things are getting pretty busy which is great because I love this hobby! Last Stand Dan

That's another great AAR of a beautiful and exciting game. I love it when a game decision comes down to the last turn!Your style of AAR is very colorful and easy to follow. Highly enjoyable. I can follow the flow of the game and almost feel like I'm there.

It appears that Gunboat #77 has been building quite the reputation due to its many recent engagements in the Sudan.

Once again your hand made gunboats are fantastic and really enhance the look and feel of the game. Very pretty and gamer friendly. We all want one of each for our games!!!!

It's great to see your young cousins getting bit by the gaming bug. Maybe they'd go to a con with you. Keep recruiting sir.......

PS - I've seen mention of your gunboats and dhows for sale on EBay, very cool. Will you be selling them off your website as well? I know you've sold them at cons as I was lucky enough to be there with you.

Hello, first of all your blog is excellent, always impressed with your work. I was curious if you plan on making gunboats and dhows in the 15mm range? This would be a great addition to the Sudan 15mm colonial collection me and my young son's are doing. Reply when you have time. Thanks. Josh

I am working on 15mm now. I have one type of sidewheeler built, building second one next week which will be followed by or in conjunction with a Dhow. I am designing the boats so that you may put bases of troops on board, but you will need a few crew individuals to fit in pilot houses or as gun crews. I'll post some pictures soon. LSD.

Fantastic looking game. Love the figures and especially the custom made boats. Could I trouble you to share a pricelist for the boats? Please IM me at fwiggins@gmail.com Excelsior and keep up the great work!